TakingITGlobal - Panorama - The American Burden

Published on: Jan 22, 2005

Topic:

Type: Opinions

https://www.tigweb.org/express/panorama/article.html?ContentID=5068

Okay Americans, here we go again. Maybe you weren't listening, but yesterday, our president pledged an unlimited amount of resources, American life, and human turmoil to the rest of the world. It might have gone unnoticed, what with the glitz of Mrs. Bush's beaded Oscar De La Renta gown and the shiny brass band marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. The media was too busy announcing that Mrs. Bush was bringing style back to Washington, not to mention that her husband was bringing the United States into Iran.

We have already expended too many lives on a war without a plan. 9/11 changed everything, they told us. So 9/11 happened and we were grief stricken, terrified, and uncertain. Lucky for us, our big bad cowboy of a president was going to "Smoke them out." So we went over to Afghanistan and dropped some bombs. Afghanistan harbors terrorists, so we blow up Afghanistan. Simple enough, makes plenty of sense to me. Way to go George, America stands behind you. Not enough to bomb Afghanistan though. This is a war on terrorism and we have to nab it no matter what God-forsaken corner of the earth is infested with it. Let's go to Iraq.

And here we are in Iraq. We have no strategy, no way out. We are banking on upcoming elections so that maybe Iraq can be independent and we can grab our oil and get out of there before we run out of troops and have to reinstate a draft.

Then, yesterday, George surprised the pants off of me. We aren't just going to spread liberty to Iraq; that's just not going to cut it. According to Bush, we have to spread liberty and democracy and freedom wherever it is contested. Maybe Bush wants to kill off the American lower class, because I cannot fathom any other reason why he would announce to the world that he is going to send more poor, uneducated young Americans to more countries where people hate us more. How American of us. We've got to be the police of the world. We've got to impose our belief structure, our ideals, our vision of what it means to be truly liberated any place we see fit.

Let's take a look at our history. We get to this continent, and, seeing that it is already inhabited by a native population, we massacre them and kick them off their land. But it's all okay, because they were savages. If we hadn't come along and killed off the ones we couldn't Christianize, they would have been a lot worse off. A couple hundred years go by and we see the Philippines. How sad it is that they are being imposed upon by the Spanish. Let's forget for a minute the incredible economic and military advantages of gaining control of these lands. So we go in there, beat up the Spanish, and they become independent. Our intentions initially, or we had said, were to get a free and independent Filipino nation. But once we get rid of Spain those poor Asians just aren’t ready to handle things on their own. So we stick around, set up naval bases, go into the Asian Market, and educate their youth according to our standards. Vietnam: again, we see our belief structure challenged. Forget that a random chunk of land in the middle of nowhere has nothing to do with us. We go in there to beat up those anti-capitalist, anti-God, anti-American monsters.

So now we have Iraq. I don't know about the rest of you, America, but George W. Bush promised me that we would be greeted over there with open arms--that the Iraqis want to develop our ideologies as their own. I think the number of dead Americans tells us that this is not the case. And yesterday, that good old cowboy told us that to impose ourselves upon Iraq is not enough. Watch out world, here we come! The United States of America: imposing on others since 1776.

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by kyra ferber
Published on: Jan 22, 2005
Topic:
Type: Opinions
https://www.tigweb.org/express/panorama/article.html?ContentID=5068


Okay Americans, here we go again. Maybe you weren't listening, but yesterday, our president pledged an unlimited amount of resources, American life, and human turmoil to the rest of the world. It might have gone unnoticed, what with the glitz of Mrs. Bush's beaded Oscar De La Renta gown and the shiny brass band marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. The media was too busy announcing that Mrs. Bush was bringing style back to Washington, not to mention that her husband was bringing the United States into Iran. We have already expended too many lives on a war without a plan. 9/11 changed everything, they told us. So 9/11 happened and we were grief stricken, terrified, and uncertain. Lucky for us, our big bad cowboy of a president was going to "Smoke them out." So we went over to Afghanistan and dropped some bombs. Afghanistan harbors terrorists, so we blow up Afghanistan. Simple enough, makes plenty of sense to me. Way to go George, America stands behind you. Not enough to bomb Afghanistan though. This is a war on terrorism and we have to nab it no matter what God-forsaken corner of the earth is infested with it. Let's go to Iraq. And here we are in Iraq. We have no strategy, no way out. We are banking on upcoming elections so that maybe Iraq can be independent and we can grab our oil and get out of there before we run out of troops and have to reinstate a draft. Then, yesterday, George surprised the pants off of me. We aren't just going to spread liberty to Iraq; that's just not going to cut it. According to Bush, we have to spread liberty and democracy and freedom wherever it is contested. Maybe Bush wants to kill off the American lower class, because I cannot fathom any other reason why he would announce to the world that he is going to send more poor, uneducated young Americans to more countries where people hate us more. How American of us. We've got to be the police of the world. We've got to impose our belief structure, our ideals, our vision of what it means to be truly liberated any place we see fit. Let's take a look at our history. We get to this continent, and, seeing that it is already inhabited by a native population, we massacre them and kick them off their land. But it's all okay, because they were savages. If we hadn't come along and killed off the ones we couldn't Christianize, they would have been a lot worse off. A couple hundred years go by and we see the Philippines. How sad it is that they are being imposed upon by the Spanish. Let's forget for a minute the incredible economic and military advantages of gaining control of these lands. So we go in there, beat up the Spanish, and they become independent. Our intentions initially, or we had said, were to get a free and independent Filipino nation. But once we get rid of Spain those poor Asians just aren’t ready to handle things on their own. So we stick around, set up naval bases, go into the Asian Market, and educate their youth according to our standards. Vietnam: again, we see our belief structure challenged. Forget that a random chunk of land in the middle of nowhere has nothing to do with us. We go in there to beat up those anti-capitalist, anti-God, anti-American monsters. So now we have Iraq. I don't know about the rest of you, America, but George W. Bush promised me that we would be greeted over there with open arms--that the Iraqis want to develop our ideologies as their own. I think the number of dead Americans tells us that this is not the case. And yesterday, that good old cowboy told us that to impose ourselves upon Iraq is not enough. Watch out world, here we come! The United States of America: imposing on others since 1776. « return.